Starmer says he does not need ‘lessons' from Farage on working people
Sir Keir Starmer said he does not need 'lessons' from Nigel Farage on what life is like for working people as he took aim at the Reform UK leader and dodged questions about the two-child benefit cap.
The Prime Minister launched a series of attacks on Mr Farage, saying that he wanted to 'protect' working people from what his party would do after they set out policy plans earlier this week.
Sir Keir said Mr Farage's plans to spend 'billions upon billions upon billions, tens of billions of pounds, in an unfunded way' was an 'exact repeat of what Liz Truss did'.
Speaking during a visit to a glass factory in the North West, the Prime Minister said the Clacton MP would not have protected jobs in industries subject to tariffs from the US.
'Can you trust him? Can you trust him with your future? Can you trust him with your jobs? Can you trust him with your mortgages, your pensions, your bills? And he gave the answer on Tuesday. A resounding no,' he said.
Mr Farage had pitched Reform UK as the 'the party of working people' rather than Labour, and accused Sir Keir of having no connection to the working class.
Sir Keir rejected this, saying: 'I know what it means to work 10 hours a day in a factory five days a week, and I know that because that is what my dad did every single working day of his life, and that's what I grew up with.
'So I don't need lessons from Nigel Farage about the issues that matter most to working people in this country.'
Sir Keir dodged questions about whether he would like to get rid of the two-child benefit cap, saying he was looking at 'all options' to drive down child poverty.
It came after Mr Farage had confirmed his party's support for scrapping the two-child benefit cap and fully reversing the winter fuel payment cuts.
Asked why he was focusing so much on Reform UK, the Prime Minister said the Conservative Party has 'run out of road'.
He said the choice for voters was now between Labour and Reform UK as he sought to draw comparisons between Mr Farage's economic proposals and the mini-budget from short-lived Tory prime minister Ms Truss that spooked the financial markets in 2022 and led to a spike in mortgage rates.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said Reform UK's pledge to increase the income tax personal allowance to £20,000 a year could cost between £50 billion and £80 billion a year.
The IFS's deputy director Helen Miller said the announcements on winter fuel payments and the two-child benefit cap were 'dwarfed' by the change to income tax personal allowance.
Kevin Hollinrake, the shadow local government secretary, said the Prime Minister has 'problems wherever he looks'.
He told Sky News: 'The public's lost interest in Labour. I mean, I don't think they were ever popular at the despatch box – we were just unpopular, and we've got a big job to do on that particular score, but I believe we can do it.
'But also Reform, the 'red wall' as we call it, the working class voters, have completely lost faith in Keir Starmer and (Chancellor) Rachel Reeves and others, not least because of the disgraceful stripping away of the winter fuel allowance.'
Sir Keir is also facing danger from dissatisfied backbenchers, he said.
'So I can understand, he's trying to basically aim his fire all around him. It'll end up in a circular firing squad, I think, and it looks very bad for the Prime Minister right now.'
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Farage's flirtation with Bitcoin will cost him his credibility
Nigel Farage's entire political career has been coupled with the pursuit of credibility. From those early days of Ukip, unsuccessfully soliciting the backing of Enoch Powell, through his incendiary years in the European Parliament culminating in Brexit, to his return to Reform ahead of last year's general election, Farage has been a vocal and powerful figure in politics – but always outside the realm of serious contender. Lately, however, the story has changed. Reform comfortably leads the polls, overturned a near 15,000-vote majority to win a by-election and was the emphatic winner of recent local elections. Farage is an MP and widely considered the unofficial opposition, despite heading only the seventh-largest party in Parliament. Even the Prime Minister was forced to declare Farage the 'main challenger' to his government. His credibility is no longer in question. Or at least it shouldn't be. But, just hours after Sir Keir Starmer conceded that Reform had replaced one of the most successful political parties in history as the focus of his attention, Farage took the stage in a foreign country to announce a new policy that could torch his hard-won recognition. Playing to the crowds of the annual Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, Farage committed the UK to a variety of crypto proposals in a move that smells more of his time in the political cold between Ukip and Reform than it does of a potential prime minister-in-waiting. While policies such as allowing Reform to accept political donations in Bitcoin are irrelevant (I honestly believed they already accepted crypto cash), and a new rate of capital gains tax just for the world's most insufferable zealots will be forgotten by both party and people, Farage laid out a dangerous precedent at his fireside chat. In declaring the Bank of England will be forced to establish a 'Bitcoin digital reserve', à la Donald Trump, Farage has made two key errors. The first threatens his credibility with markets and the mysterious 'bond vigilantes' – a relationship that has already been strained by his other recent policy announcements. It's not even the ridiculous notion itself of a nation state buying a bunch of Bitcoin that rankles, but the inherent threat to the independence of the central bank which is foolhardy. Just ask Liz Truss. Even Trump has (somewhat) backed down from his fight with 'loser' chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell, understanding that, like it or not, an independent central bank is sacrosanct in the 21st century. There are fair arguments to be made on both sides regarding Farage's £90bn tax cuts. They simply cannot all be instated and do ring of 'fantasy economics' in some regards, but I think you would struggle to find any supporters of 'fiscal drag', that most euphemistic of persistent tax burdens. But, even more vital to Farage's credibility is his perception from the polling station, not Threadneedle Street – and right now he seems more concerned with winning votes in the US than he does the UK. Crypto is not a serious issue for voters here: a recent YouGov survey found that just 11pc of people in the UK have a positive view of crypto, which correlates with the amount of people who own any. More than a third of people either don't know or don't care. It strikes anyone paying attention as a tickbox exercise designed to emulate the American Right rather than built from his own sincere belief. A brief look at the comments confirms it: 'Farage is making a big mistake here. He is copying Trump on this but the involvement of Trump and his DJT company and of his two sons in this is rather murky, to say the least.' 'Sorry Nigel, not a good idea, total gamble and the sort of thing Trump does, but should not be for a stable central bank to do…' Perhaps Farage is hoping for a boost to the (unaffiliated) $FARAGE coin he once shilled for (currently down 96pc on its peak). Or maybe he is being paid for the promotion (like his £189,000 pay cheque from Direct Bullion for four hours' work promoting gold). He may even sincerely believe these policies will drag Britain into a prosperous future. But he must consider whether all of this is worth that hard won and easily lost prize of credibility. He'll have to make up his mind soon. The most liked comment under the news of his Bitcoin bill is simple: 'Successfully turning me off Reform day-by-day.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
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And while the prize is enormous, the risks involved in building and sustaining a broad and often contradictory electoral coalition are also huge. It was a conundrum that Farage appeared to address this week, when he made what was essentially his first speech as a possible future prime minister. Ostensibly, Farage was announcing a mini-policy package. But what the speech most clearly revealed was the high-wire act Farage must now embark upon as he appeals to a broader public rather than a minority – even a significant minority – of voters. As a political strategist who has pored over electoral data for 25 years, I've seen how Farage's primary following has been made up of 'upwardly-mobile', lower-middle-class, ex-Tories who revere Margaret Thatcher. But for the last few years, they have been joined by a mass of poorer, working-class voters who have expectations of state support that simply are not shared by Farage's first followers. So while most of his prospective voters are provincial and on lower incomes, they increasingly pull in different directions. This week showed Reform will struggle to please both sides. In truth, the policy package Farage announced was a dog's breakfast. It will confirm to many in Westminster that they are miles away from being ready for government. Breezily reassuring everyone that cutting waste will pay all the bills is already attracting ridicule. For the scale of the proposals was vast. On the one hand, Farage pledged to protect winter fuel payments for older voters and to scrap the two-child benefit cap. On the other hand, they pledged to raise the personal allowance for income tax. Concerns raised about Reform's credibility on the public finances will not have seriously registered among the party's supporters – and most will be enthused at the prospect of Reform channelling Elon Musk and taking a chainsaw to public spending. And on the substance, none of these policies will have alienated any part of their coalition. However, their more affluent, Thatcherite voters will have raised an eyebrow at least at their pledge to remove the two-child benefit cap. A year ago, polls showed voters backed the cap by two-to-one as people tired of seeing neighbours using welfare to sustain lifestyles that full-time workers are struggling to match. Farage says removing this cap will boost the domestic workforce and reduce firms' reliance on migrant labour. The policy, he said, 'is aimed at British families. It's not aimed at those that come into the country and suddenly decide to have a lot of children.' This will be enough to reassure Reform's coalition that he was not in the process of selling out. He will not mind that such policies will inevitably bring accusations of a 'Britain-first' nativism, reflecting his closeness to President Trump's Maga movement in America. 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Starmer's continued failure on immigration explains why Reform tops all the polling charts. Recent polling by Ipsos showed Reform is more trusted than either the Conservatives or Labour on immigration policy. All this takes us back to Farage's speech this week and his position as a prime minister in waiting. How likely is it that Reform will form a government? To answer this, we should first consider how 'sticky' their voters are likely to be. It is one thing to tell a pollster you will vote Reform – or vote for Reform in the local elections – but another thing to put a cross next to a Reform candidate in a general election. But Reform's provincial electoral base has lost all trust in the main parties. While Starmer might be able to bring immigration down significantly, and reduce the flow of small boats, it is unlikely that he will manage to do so on the scale required to soothe Reform voters. Hopes that economic growth will return or that the NHS will see a step-change in performance also seem unlikely. You must still doubt whether Reform can sustain their poll lead in the face of a massive establishment backlash. As I wrote in these pages recently, if public sector unions, the civil service, the legal profession and even the police all line up to suggest that life in Britain will grind to an unpleasant halt with Farage as prime minister, you must assume that many voters will not have the stomach for such a fight. That said, Reform are still heading to secure many dozens of MPs at the next election. At the heart of a much-needed perfectly-run campaign must be a manifesto which emphasises their strength on key issues of immigration and crime, and which reassures voters they are not about to mess everything else up (above all, the NHS). If you were creating a populist party from scratch, polls and focus groups would dictate the design of your manifesto. You would start with the absolute non-negotiables for the public and work from there. But Reform's manifesto cannot be purely determined by opinion research. Farage entirely defines Reform and he has a clear ideological history as a Right-wing Thatcherite. Reform cannot therefore just say whatever voters want to hear. As we saw this week, the nature of Reform's coalition makes policy design hard. Their immigration policies only need refinement and defensive lines, mainly to reassure voters that NHS and care workers will still be able to move to Britain. The same is true of their policies on crime and justice, which pledge a shift of policing towards serious offences and an expansion of prison capacity. Three things should inform their approach to the rest of their manifesto. Firstly, they should ramp up those micro-policies that they know the public care about deeply, but which tend to be written off by other parties as parochial. 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